Last week two Russian submersibles descended to the seabed beneath the North Pole and planted a flag, as a symbolic gesture of staking a claim to much of the Arctic Sea. When Reuters ran the story it seemed to have scooped all of its rivals by obtaining an actual photo of the Russian submarines beneath the North Pole. It ran a picture with the caption: "Russian miniature submarines are seen under water in the Arctic Ocean in this image taken from a television broadcast yesterday." The image was subsequently reproduced by many newspapers around the world.

But a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy who saw the picture thought there was something strange about it. He had seen it before. And then he remembered where. It was a scene from James Cameron's Titanic. He contacted his local newspaper to share his realization.

Turns out that it was a film still from the movie. Reuters had simply lifted some images that appeared on Russian State TV, and the Russians were, in turn, using stock footage of submersibles searching for the Titanic (footage that Cameron evidently also used in his movie). Most news sources now seem to have pulled the image, but Canada.com is still running the story with the incorrectly captioned Titanic footage. In case they yank it soon, see the screenshot below.

Maybe it's because I'm exhausted, but I didn't catch the flub on the bridge video from CNN....can someone fill me in?

Posted by Josh in Texas on Mon Aug 13, 2007 at 08:44 PM

If you squint, the submersible in the picture looks like one of the robots from Disney's "The Black Hole"... or Jesus with glasses, or Cartman from South Park. With glasses

Posted by Hairy Houdini on Mon Aug 13, 2007 at 10:19 PM

-- UPDATE --

Reuters wasn't the perpetrator of this hoax it was just one of the victims. According to The Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2146629,00.html ) the Russian state television company Rossiya broadcast the story using the footage from Titanic to make the story look a little more exciting on TV.

"Rossiya's images were distributed all over the world, appearing on television news broadcasts and websites in Britain and as "screen grabs" in newspapers."